Practically from the day the bombs stopped falling and the guns fell silent, Japan began an astonishing turnaround. From a bomb-flattened, radioactive ruin, the country that had started World War II in the Pacific built itself, in a few short years, into the world's third-largest economy.

Japan, which had spent the previous fifteen years allowing militarists, hegemonists and paranoid chauvinists to ruin its reputation and wreck its economy, was now showing the world that it was under new management and moving forward. It was a stunning accomplishment.

But to be fair, they had had considerable help. And not all of it was voluntary.

"But for Americans who were forced to work in the war production for at least forty-four Japanese companies, the haunting perception is that ... the miraculous recovery of Japan's industries began on the backs of our prisoners of war."

Japan had signed some of Geneva Conventions of 1929, but its parliament had refused to ratify the portion that strictly forbade the use of prisoners of war in war-related work.

The United States spent much of the war assuring its enemies that they would be held accountable, once the fighting was done, for any war crimes or human rights violations they committed; and while Japanese military and government leaders ultimately did pay a price for that country's rampage across Asia and the Pacific, the business leaders who had cooked up the whole American POWs-as-slave-laborers scheme were let off the hook.

As Holmes and others have reported over the years, the exigencies of the Cold War - the American desire to get Japan back on its feet quickly, and firmly in our corner as an ally, to counter the growing Communist threat in Asia - gave these captains of Japanese industry a free pass.

The 60-Second Know-It-All project is an experimental series of informational videos produced by Plain Dealer graphic and video artist William Neff, with sound design and considerable creative input from Emmy-winning Plain Dealer photo and sound editor Jon Fobes.